编者：这篇文章首次发表于1934年，那一年爱因斯坦55岁。每个人对这个世界都有自己独特的看法，但不是每个人都有机会把自己的世界观公开发表出来。其实这样一篇文章不需要很长的篇幅，也不一定是成名成家的人物，才有资格谈论自己的世界观。在互联网普及的今天，也许会看到更多人的世界观。很久之前读过中译本，总觉有些拗口，自己重新翻译，和原文记于此。
生命的意义：人生有意义吗？或者再进一步，所有有机生物的生命？要回答这个问题，就会涉及宗教。那么也许你会问，干嘛要问这个问题？我的回答是，如果一个人认为自己和其他人类的生命没有任何意义，那么对于他自己就不仅仅是不幸那么简单了，而是根本不合适成为一个生命。
我的世界观：作为一个寿命有限的物种，我们的处境多奇特啊！我们每一个人都在这世上匆匆忙忙地走一遭。为了什么？没人知道。虽然有的时候，会感觉到一种使命感。如果只从日常生活，不做深究的话，我们是为了周围的人而活。首先是为了熟人的笑脸和健康，这是我们快乐的源泉。然后呢，是为了社会上其他我们并不熟识的人，我们之间的命运通过相互同情而维系。每天我都无数次的提醒自己，我的生活里里外外都依赖于其他人的工作，甚至包括那些已经故去的人。所以我必须尽我所能回馈我所享受的，从过去到现在。我崇尚简单生活，为自己占据了太多其他人的劳动而惴惴不安。我认为阶级的划分并不公平，说到底是基于权力。我还认为简单的生活有益于每一个人的身心。
从哲学角度来讲，我不相信人类是自由的。每个人的行为，既来自于外界的驱使，也来自于内心的需求。叔本华的那句，“人的行为由意念支配，而意念却不受人支配”，一直让我深受启发，并在我面对艰难世事的时候，给我不尽的安慰，也是我耐心的源泉。幸好有了这种感觉，才消减了那种很容易让人感到无力的责任感，也让人们不至于太把自己和别人当回事儿。毕竟生活中需要一些幽默。
从主观的角度，质询人生的意义或者目的，对于我来说有些荒诞。毕竟每个人对自己的努力和判断，都有自己的理想。从这个意义讲，我从来不认为从容和喜乐是最终目的，这种目的对一群猪更合适。在我的人生旅途之中，不时鞭策着我，给我乐观面对生活的勇气的，是“真，善，美”。如果没有志同道合的人的陪伴，没有对目标的坚守，没有在艺术和科学领域无尽的求索，人生于我没有任何意义。通常他人努力追求的东西，比如财产，成功和奢侈，我视之如粪土。
我对社会公正和社会责任富有激情，这和我明显与他人和社群保持距离的态度，是一个奇怪的反差。我特立独行，打心眼儿里就从来不觉得我属于自己的祖国，自己的家，自己的朋友，或者自己的亲人。我从来都漠视这些羁绊，独处的需求与日俱增。或许有人清楚的知道，与他人达成共识和共情的可能性是有限的。这没什么可遗憾的。这样的人无疑会缺少一些亲和力，心态也不会轻松，但是另一方面，他大多不会太在意别人的意见，习惯和看法，会避免这些不稳定的因素影响自己的立场。
我的政治理想是民主。每个人都有尊严，而不崇拜任何人。虽然有些讽刺的是，我本人就接受了过度的称赞和钦佩。此事非本人之功，亦非本人之过。大概是源于本人尽自己虽绵薄但不懈之努力所提出的一两个理论，理解这些理论超出了很多人的能力范围，但是大家都渴望了解更多。一个复杂组织的顺利运作，往往需要组织的首脑来做规划和指导，当然也承担责任。但是领导力是不可强加于人的，大家必须能够选择自己的领导人。一个基于高压政治的独裁系统，在我看来，必不长久。因为暴力旗帜下所聚集的必是无德之人，天才的暴君也会被无赖所继承，我相信这是铁律。基于这个原因，我强烈反对我们今天在意大利和俄罗斯所看到的制度。今天欧洲的主流民主制度所遭到的诟病，并不是源于民主本身，而是源于政府首脑缺乏稳定性和缺少个人色彩的选举制度。我认为关于民主制度，美国的做法是正确的。他们的总统是能够负责的职位，总统有足够长的任期和足够的权力，去做到真正的负责。不过从另一个方面来讲，我们的政治制度的价值在于它能够给予病患或者需要的人更广泛的帮助。依我看来，人生这场盛宴，真正宝贵的不是什么国家，而是每一个富有创造力，有感知的个人，个性鲜明的个人。只有个人，才能创造出高贵和高尚。而群体，于思想于情感，都是愚钝的。
由此让我想到了群体性最糟糕的体现，就是我所憎恶的军队体系。如果一个人能够在军乐队的伴奏中，在队列式的行进中找到快乐，那就足以让我鄙视了。他拥有大脑都是一个错误，给他一个脊椎就够了。这个文明的灾祸应该被尽快铲除。命令下产生的英雄主义，无意义的暴行，以及所有的令人厌恶的荒唐，这些都以爱国之名 --- 我痛恨所有这些！对于我来说，战争是一个恶毒而可鄙的东西，我宁愿粉身碎骨也绝不参与这种可憎之事。尽管如此，我对人类的敬意让我相信，如果不是因为国家的心智被商业和政治利益通过学校和传媒被系统的腐化了，战争早就应该被扫进历史的垃圾堆了。
我们所能经历的最奇妙的莫过于神秘了吧？它是在真正的艺术和科学摇篮边，最朴素的情感。如果一个人不知道神秘，不能感到好奇，不再会感叹，那么他和死了也没什么两样，一只熄灭的蜡烛罢了。正是这种神秘的感觉，哪怕或许参杂着恐惧，孕育出了宗教。要知道某些存在是我们无法了解的，是最深奥的原因的表象，是最绚烂的美丽，这些都只能以最基本的形式被我们的理智所触及。这种认知和这种情绪，构成了真正的宗教态度。从这个角度，也只从这个角度，我是一个虔诚的教徒。我无法设想一个能够奖赏或者惩罚他所创之生命的造物主，也无法设想一个与我们自己的认知有相似欲望的神。我无法理解一个人身体死亡之后还能存在，我也不希望如此。那些软弱的灵魂，出于恐惧和无聊的自我意识，才会有这些想法。对于我来说，永恒生命的神秘，现实结构的神奇，专心探索去了解哪怕是微不足道的一部分，这些对我已经足够了。
The Meaning of Life
What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer
this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in
putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his
fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost
disqualified for life.
The World as I see it
What an extraordinary situation is that of us mortals! Each of us is here for a
brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he
feels it. But from the point of view of daily life, without going deeper, we exist
for our fellow-men--in the first place for those on whose smiles and welfare all
our happiness depends, and next for all those unknown to us personally with
whose destinies we are bound up by the tie of sympathy. A hundred times
every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labours
of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in
the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly
drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am
engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard
class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I
also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.
In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever.
Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance
with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that "a man can do as he will, but
not will as he will," has been an inspiration to me since my youth up, and a
continual consolation and unfailing well-spring of patience in the face of the
hardships of life, my own and others'. This feeling mercifully mitigates the
sense of responsibility which so easily becomes paralysing, and it prevents us
from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it conduces to a view of
life in which humour, above all, has its due place.
To inquire after the meaning or object of one's own existence or of creation
generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his
endeavours and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease
and happiness as ends in themselves--such an ethical basis I call more proper
for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time
after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth,
Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship with men of like mind,
of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art
and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary
objects of human endeavour--property, outward success, luxury--have
always seemed to me contemptible.
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always
contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct
contact with other human beings and human communities. I gang my own gait
and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my
immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never
lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude--a feeling
which increases with the years. One is sharply conscious, yet without regret,
of the limits to the possibility of mutual understanding and sympathy with one's
fellow-creatures. Such a person no doubt loses something in the way of
geniality and light-heartedness ; on the other hand, he is largely independent of
the opinions, habits, and judgments of his fellows and avoids the temptation to
take his stand on such insecure foundations.
My political ideal is that of democracy. Let every man be respected as an
individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of fate that I myself have been the
recipient of excessive admiration and respect from my fellows through no
fault, and no merit, of my own. The cause of this may well be the desire,
unattainable for many, to understand the one or two ideas to which I have
with my feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am quite aware
that it is necessary for the success of any complex undertaking that one man
should do the thinking and directing and in general bear the responsibility. But
the led must not be compelled, they must be able to choose their leader. An
autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force
always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule
that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels. For this reason I have
always been passionately opposed to systems such as we see in Italy and
Russia to-day. The thing that has brought discredit upon the prevailing form of
democracy in Europe to-day is not to be laid to the door of the democratic
idea as such, but to lack of stability on the part of the heads of governments
and to the impersonal character of the electoral system. I believe that in this
respect the United States of America have found the right way. They have a
responsible President who is elected for a sufficiently long period and has sufficient powers to be really responsible. On the other hand, what I value in
our political system is the more extensive provision that it makes for the
individual in case of illness or need. The really valuable thing in the pageant of
human life seems to me not the State but the creative, sentient individual, the
personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such
remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.
This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military
system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation
to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been
given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This
plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed.
Heroism by order, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that does
by the name of patriotism--how I hate them! War seems to me a mean,
contemptible thing: I would rather be hacked in pieces than take part in such
an abominable business. And yet so high, in spite of everything, is my opinion
of the human race that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago,
had the sound sense of the nations not been systematically corrupted by
commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press.
The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental
emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who
knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good
as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery--even if
mixed with fear--that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of
something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest
reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in
their most elementary forms--it is this knowledge and this emotion that
constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a
deeply religious man. I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes
his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves.
An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my
comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or
absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of
life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the
single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the
reason that manifests itself in nature
